scholarly journals Entropy and the Direction of Time

Entropy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 388
Author(s):  
Jerzy Gołosz
Keyword(s):  
Physical Theory ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Open Future ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Research Programmes ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
The Open Future ◽  
The Asymmetry

The paper tries to demonstrate that the process of the increase of entropy does not explain the asymmetry of time itself because it is unable to account for its fundamental asymmetries, that is, the asymmetry of traces (we have traces of the past and no traces of the future), the asymmetry of causation (we have an impact on future events with no possibility of having an impact on the past), and the asymmetry between the fixed past and the open future, To this end, the approaches of Boltzmann, Reichenbach (and his followers), and Albert are analysed. It is argued that we should look for alternative approaches instead of this, namely we should consider a temporally asymmetrical physical theory or seek a source of the asymmetry of time in metaphysics. This second approach may even turn out to be complementary if only we accept that metaphysics can complement scientific research programmes.

Time and Truth: The Presentism-Eternalism Debate

Philosophy ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Stoneham
Keyword(s):  
Open Future ◽  
Equal Footing ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Growing Block ◽  
The Open Future ◽  
Block Universe ◽  
The Way

AbstractThere are many questions we can ask about time, but perhaps the most fundamental is whether there are metaphysically interesting differences between past, present and future events. An eternalist believes in a block universe: past, present and future events are all on an equal footing. A gradualist believes in a growing block: he agrees with the eternalist about the past and the present but not about the future. A presentist believes that what is present has a special status. My first claim is that the familiar ways of articulating these views result in there being no substantive disagreement at all between the three parties. I then show that if we accept the controversial truthmaking principle, we can articulate a substantive disagreement. Finally, I apply this way of formulating the debate to related questions such as the open future and determinism, showing that these do not always line up in quite the way one would expect.

Grounding the Open Future

2021 ◽  
pp. 8-20
Author(s):  
Patrick Todd
Keyword(s):  
Open Future ◽  
General Thesis ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Open Future ◽  
Patrick Todd

In this chapter, Patrick Todd considers how presentists can argue that the future is open, holding fixed that they maintain that the past is not. He argues that any such presentist argument is doomed to failure, if it proceeds by appeal to a general thesis about truth (such as that “truth supervenes on being”). Thus, he contends, presentist open futurists should not argue for the open future from an intuition about truth in general, but from an intuition about the future in particular. The result, however, is that presentist open futurists cannot make their case by appeal to anything like a metaphysically neutral starting point. Nevertheless, due to certain asymmetries between facts about the past and facts about the future, a presentist open future view remains substantially theoretically motivated.

scholarly journals A palace fit for the future: Desirability in temporal work

2021 ◽  
pp. 147612702110120
Author(s):  
Siavash Alimadadi ◽  
Andrew Davies ◽  
Fredrik Tell
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
The Past ◽  
Renewal Program ◽  
The Future ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Future Outcomes ◽  
Pluralistic Contexts

Research on the strategic organization of time often assumes that collective efforts are motivated by and oriented toward achieving desirable, although not necessarily well-defined, future states. In situations surrounded by uncertainty where work has to proceed urgently to avoid an impending disaster, however, temporal work is guided by engaging with both desirable and undesirable future outcomes. Drawing on a real-time, in-depth study of the inception of the Restoration and Renewal program of the Palace of Westminster, we investigate how organizational actors develop a strategy for an uncertain and highly contested future while safeguarding ongoing operations in the present and preserving the heritage of the past. Anticipation of undesirable future events played a crucial role in mobilizing collective efforts to move forward. We develop a model of future desirability in temporal work to identify how actors construct, link, and navigate interpretations of desirable and undesirable futures in their attempts to create a viable path of action. By conceptualizing temporal work based on the phenomenological quality of the future, we advance understanding of the strategic organization of time in pluralistic contexts characterized by uncertainty and urgency.

Church Time and Astrological Time in the Waning Middle Ages

2002 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 117-132
Author(s):  
Hilary M. Carey
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Missed Opportunities ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Primary Qualities ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Scientific Claims ◽  
To Come

Time, according to medieval theologians and philosophers, was experienced in radically different ways by God and by his creation. Indeed, the obligation to dwell in time, and therefore to have no sure knowledge of what was to come, was seen as one of the primary qualities which marked the post-lapsarian state. When Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden of delights, they entered a world afflicted with the changing of the seasons, in which they were obliged to work and consume themselves with the needs of the present day and the still unknown dangers of the next. Medieval concerns about the use and abuse of time were not merely confined to anxiety about the present, or awareness of seized or missed opportunities in the past. The future was equally worrying, in particular the extent to which this part of time was set aside for God alone, or whether it was permissible to seek to know the future, either through revelation and prophecy, or through science. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the scientific claims of astrology to provide a means to explain the outcome of past and future events, circumventing God’s distant authority, became more and more insistent. This paper begins by examining one skirmish in this larger battle over the control of the future.

Urban Developments in Late Antique and Medieval Rome

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Art Music ◽  
Medieval History ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The Past ◽  
Creative Solutions ◽  
The Future ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
Disciplinary Group

A narrative of decline punctuated by periods of renewal has long structured perceptions of Rome's late antique and medieval history. In their probing contributions to this volume, a multi-disciplinary group of scholars provides alternative approaches to understanding the period. Addressing developments in governance, ceremony, literature, art, music, clerical education and the city's very sense of its own identity, the essays examine how a variety of actors, from poets to popes, addressed the intermittent crises and shifting dynamics of these centuries with creative solutions that bolstered the city's resilience. Without denying that the past (both pre-Christian and Christian) always remained a powerful touchstone, the studies in this volume offer rich new insights into the myriad ways that Rome and Romans, between the fifth and the eleventh centuries, creatively assimilated the past in order to shape the future.

scholarly journals Consumption of Politic Parties, in the Areas Where the Same Party Has Governed (Strongholds)

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-158
Author(s):  
Erindi Bejko
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
National Election ◽  
Local Elections ◽  
Political Force ◽  
The Past ◽  
Election Process ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
The Future ◽  
General Elections

Abstract Political parties in Albania on several occasions during the past two decades have won the election in certain areas over 3 times in a row. While victory and governance of the same area, for sure creates a margin consumption which has affected the dynamics of the bastions at least in the recent national election. Parties are consumed in their strongholds if they decide the same candidates, either as a political force. In the focus of this article, will be the consuming steps of political parties in their stronghold areas, either reflecting the fall results during the election process. Will we have a final rupture in Albania consumption bastions of political parties and how would be the future of dynamic bastion, will be the question of this article scientific research. A fracture would have strongholds in shqipare perfuindimtare the consumption of political parties and how will be the future of dynamics will be bastions of this artikulil question scientific research. Bastion’s consumption occurs mainly from major political forces on the left if either of right on the study will be taken 4 constituencies which voted for the same party in three elections one by one. In our focus will be general elections, not local elections.

DEATH

Think ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (35) ◽  
pp. 101-108
Author(s):  
Clement Dore
Keyword(s):  
Derek Parfit ◽  
Thomas Nagel ◽  
Rational Person ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Asymmetry ◽  
The Way

In the final chapter of his book, The View from Nowhere, the American philosopher, Thomas Nagel, writes as follows about death:We do not regard the period before we were born in the same way we regard the prospect of death, yet most of the things that can be said about death are equally true of the former. Lucretius thought this showed that it was a mistake to regard death as an evil. But I believe it is an example of a more general future-past asymmetry... [Derek] Parfit has explored the asymmetry in connection with other values such as... pain. The fact that a pain (of ours) is in prospect rather than in the past has a very great effect on our attitude toward it, and this effect cannot be regarded as irrational... [the former asymmetry] can't be accounted for in terms of some other difference between past and future nonexistence, any more than the asymmetry in the case of pain can be accounted for in terms of some other differences between past and future pains, which makes the latter worse than the former.Nagel is maintaining in this quote that it is rational for a person to view pains which he is apt to experience in the future in a manner different from the way in which he views pains which he has experienced in the past. Nagel is saying that it is rational for a person to think of his future pains as more undesirable than his past ones. And Nagel claims that there is a similar asymmetry between a rational person's attitude towards a past in which he did not exist and a time in the future when he will not exist. In Nagel's view, just as a rational person will think of pains which he will experience as more undesirable than pains which he had in the past, he will think of his not existing in the future as much more undesirable than his not having existed in the past.

scholarly journals The Reality Of Scientific Research In Iraqi Universities And Ways Of Upgrading

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 62-75
Author(s):  
Hussein Aliwi Nasser
Keyword(s):  
Previous History ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Verbal Description ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Descriptive Approach ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Official Sources ◽  
Different Sources

The fields of scientific research expanded with the development of human civilization, where science was a practice of verbal description. It underwent a lot of change and development, and the Arabs had a long history in the field of science and scientists. The scientific messages contained the facts, theories and perceptions of the finest that can be obtained in any Another place of the world (1).       The objective of the research is to study the concept of scientific research in Iraq and to show its role in the service of society, and it is natural to face difficulties and obstacles, because upgrading it according to available possibilities. The research also dealt with the impact of Iraqi universities as the main incubator for scientific research.      As for the survey tools used in the research or the method used, the information was derived from different sources. The analytical descriptive descriptive approach was used in studying many of the developments and variables that accompanied the historical development of scientific research. As it is said, history is the "forefather of human sciences and (2), we are part of history, and one day we will turn to history, and history was the future of a date before and prior to the previous history. To understand the present, it is necessary to study the past in all its dimensions and to understand it in a way that helps us to predict the future and give the closest expectations to accuracy and realism.       With regard to the sources of the study, it relied on the official sources and references in the field of scientific research, as well as the translated Arabic references

scholarly journals Positioning the Writing Centre

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-77
Author(s):  
David A. Burke
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Open Future ◽  
University Library ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Open Future ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
University Of Oslo ◽  
The University ◽  
Support Students ◽  
Successes And Challenges

Implicit in the discussion about the “open” future of the library are questions about the library’s identity in an increasingly digital context and anticipations of change (Anderson et al., 2017). But the “open” future of the library does not need to be a passive future. Much like the traditional library, whose books and reading rooms were positioned between students and faculties, the future library can still occupy a similar liminal space, even as digital access supplants books and librarians do less shushing. But the future library must actively seek to occupy that space. As a future library service, a writing centre can be positioned to help do so. This paper draws on the experience of the Academic Writing Centre at the University of Oslo (UiO). As part of the University Library, the Writing Centre is already actively helping to mediate the space between students and instructors. Empowered by its liminal position, the Writing Centre offers tailored, non-hegemonic writing support based on student and faculty needs. As a best practices presentation, this paper identifies key aspects of the Writing Centre’s operational model to demonstrate how the Writing Centre at UiO has already begun to actively (re)position the University Library in the space between students and faculties. Drawing from Academic Literacy theory (Lillis, 2001; Lea & Street, 1998), this paper characterizes the space between students and instructors in the context of academic writing, emphasizing the aspects of identity formulation germane to the writing process (Ivanič, 1998; Lillis, 2010), as well as the faculties’ mandates to develop discourse literacy. From its liminal position between the faculties and the students, and with an awareness of the nature of the gap between the two, the Writing Centre (as part of the University Library) aims to actively support students and instructors toward each other and spark broader collaboration with the University Library, now and in the future. On a practical level, this paper discusses successes and challenges for the Academic Writing Centre so far and offers insight into the Writing Centre’s important role in the future library.

scholarly journals The arrow of time in operational formulations of quantum theory

Quantum ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 520
Author(s):  
Andrea Di Biagio ◽  
Pietro Donà ◽  
Carlo Rovelli
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Theory ◽  
Time Orientation ◽  
Implicit Assumption ◽  
Arrow Of Time ◽  
Mathematical Objects ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Asymmetry ◽  
The Difference

The operational formulations of quantum theory are drastically time oriented. However, to the best of our knowledge, microscopic physics is time-symmetric. We address this tension by showing that the asymmetry of the operational formulations does not reflect a fundamental time-orientation of physics. Instead, it stems from built-in assumptions about the users of the theory. In particular, these formalisms are designed for predicting the future based on information about the past, and the main mathematical objects contain implicit assumption about the past, but not about the future. The main asymmetry in quantum theory is the difference between knowns and unknowns.

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